Invite to Interview - No schedule?

[MixedMethods]

Hello All!

So I was fortunate enough to receive an invitation to interview (from my POI) at a cognitive psych program a couple weeks ago. After finalizing dates that worked for me and the other people interviewing, I booked my flights and forwarded my travel itinerary to both the graduate coordinator and my POI, as per their request. While the coordinator responded to confirm receiving it, my POI did not. Furthermore, I have kindly prompted/asked for any sort of schedule for my visit prior to submitting my travel itinerary, and the POI stated that one would be sent soon. It's been over a week and I have heard nothing.

Now, I didn't originally ask again (I've already mentioned this twice) because I did not want to seem impatient. However, with less than a week till the interview, I feel like I should know SOMETHING about the schedule/itinerary. At the risk of coming off as pushy, should I ask? Is it normal to leave a potential grad student in the dark this long? 

Thanks!

[Nut-ella]

I would say keeping students in dark is not uncommon. I also have on-campus interviews coming up in 10 days and I wasn't sent any agenda either. Last year at one school, I was given my meetings schedule on the day of the interview.

To keep it brief, please don't worry (worrying will use up your cognitive resources which you need!). Try to be familiar with the research interests of your areas' faculty, and try to prepare intelligent answers to common questions (e.g., why do you want to go to grad school? what are your research interests? what are your career goals upon graduating?).

Best of luck!

 

[8BitJourney]

Ditto with what the above poster said. For many of my interviews we didn't get an interview itinerary beforehand either. Heck we had to change one of mine mid interview day as a winter storm hit. Just bring snacks, water, wear comfy shoes, and read up on your POI and skim a few other faculty. You'll be fine

[MixedMethods]

Thank you both for the advice! I am definitely trying to keep the jitters at bay and have been devoting time in the evenings to prepare. However, the only information I have is to arrive before 3 pm on Sunday (whether that is the airport or the school has not been stated). So hopefully I get some direction as to where I am supposed to meet soon.

[TakeruK]

When academics visit, the usual protocol is to have a detailed itinerary either the night before the visit or the morning when you arrive. This is true at almost all levels, from grad admissions interview to when you later visit departments as invited speakers and when you're on the job market. As someone who has planned many of these visits for prospective students as well as visiting scholars, it's really really hard to get people to commit to time slots and you have to juggle all of the scheduling conflicts. Especially when there are more than 1 visitor at a time, you can't lock in a schedule because you might have to move everyone around again because Prof X really wants to meet with Student A but they can only meet at these specific times etc.

And, you don't want to ask people for these time slots more than a week in advance otherwise they will forget and add other things to their schedule. For small meetings (1-3 visitors), I generally start 3 work days ahead of the event and finalize everything the afternoon prior to the visit. More lead time is necessary for multiple visitors, but I find that you can't finalize things until the day before anyways.

However, as you get closer to the date, you should get some overall information. I am usually able to tell people something like, we start meetings at X hours, your talk will be at 2pm (just an example) and we'll arrange for lunch and dinner and that you should expect to have meetings during the day. However, exactly who you are meeting with at what time won't be known until the night before or the morning of!

[Clinpsyc01]

I agree with the others that this is normal and it’s very likely that the schedule hasn’t been confirmed yet. For instance, my program is interviewing candidates very soon, but I know that even my advisor hasn’t received the interview day schedule yet because it’s impossible to plan for these things far in advance.

As long as you know when and where to go on the day of your interview, don’t worry about it! 

[MixedMethods]

38 minutes ago, hsnl said:

I agree with the others that this is normal and it’s very likely that the schedule hasn’t been confirmed yet. For instance, my program is interviewing candidates very soon, but I know that even my advisor hasn’t received the interview day schedule yet because it’s impossible to plan for these things far in advance.

As long as you know when and where to go on the day of your interview, don’t worry about it! 

That's the only issue though -  I don't know where to go. I have only been advised to arrive by 3:00 pm on a specific day.

[Clinpsyc01]

3 hours ago, MixedMethods said:

That's the only issue though -  I don't know where to go. I have only been advised to arrive by 3:00 pm on a specific day.

Don’t worry yet. You’ll most likely get more information a day or two before the interview. If not, then you might want to contact someone.